The present invention generally relates to a the continuous spooling of wire, and more specifically to a continuous spooler for and method of winding reels with selected length long ends.
It is conventional for wire to be taken from a drawing machine or an extruder and continuously spooled on a pair of associated reels. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,763,442; 3,086,721; 3,368,765 and 4,119,278, all of which are owned by the Assignee of this application. As will be appreciated, it is undesirable that the wire-drawing machine or extruder be shut down to transfer the wire feed from a filled reel to an empty one. Therefore, means have been devised to automatically shift the wire from a full reel to an empty one while the wire-drawing machine or extruder remains in operation. The reels are normally mounted side-by-side on parallel axes as described in the above-referenced patents.
In a variety of applications of spooled wire, it is frequently desirable that both the starting (or inside) and the terminal (or outer) ends of the wire of the full reel be readily accessible prior to unwinding. This simplifies "follow-on" processes, since ends can then be joined to assure continuous operation. For this purpose, it is preferred that the inside wire end have a preselected desired length typically 2-3 ft. so as to facilitate such a process.
Virtually all of the devices which have hitherto been proposed for providing a long free inner-end on a reel uses some variation of a false coiling core, either a separate auxiliary spool, separate from the main core, or a structure which is built into the flanges of the main winding core. In many of the prior art spooling arrangements, a dummy spool is used adjacent to a main and the wire must go over the flanges when the long end is formed. This frequently results in a instantaneous change in velocity with a resultant increase in the tension in the wire as the wire crosses over the flange from one diameter to the other. Such changes in tension and abrupt discontinuities in the movements of the wire often create elongation and breakage of the wire. More importantly, wire in such spoolers typically advance at very high speeds.
At 6,000 ft. a minute, one second represents 100 ft. of wire movement. Even small errors, therefore, in the timing of feeding wire on to the false or dummy spool can create in excess of 30 ft. of unnecessary and undesired wire on the long end which simply has to be cut off and discarded as scrap.
Timing, therefore, is very critical. If the wire is wound onto the dummy spool even a fraction of a second too long, tens of feet can be added onto the dummy spool. Clearly, such excessively long ends are totally useless and must be cut to desired lengths of between 2 to 3 feet. The excesses are merely scrap which must be discarded--a costly waste. If winding of the dummy spool is too short the inside ends may be too short and may not be able to be used in a continuous wire feeding process.
For the aforementioned spoolers, the lengths of the inside long ends can be controlled somewhat better as the speed of the drawing or extrusion line is reduced during the period that the long ends are produced. however, this may significantly and adversely effect the productivity of the line since one must not only consider the time taken to slow down the spooler but as well the time to bring entire line back to its normal operating speed.
Other disadvantages of the prior art spoolers include the fact that they frequently scratch the wire, particularly as the wire is guided over a reel flange between the main and dummy spools. Additionally, the spoolers of the type under discussion cannot normally be used, for example, when winding aluminum or hard filament materials. The movement of such hard filaments over a flange, as suggested above, and change in the velocity of the wire would likely result in the breakage of the wire.